Pause

Life at Clover Field is stormy right now. Both Italian and I are adjusting to relatively new jobs and new projects and our work days are spilling into our personal evenings. In addition, we have had some rough times personally, as our families have experienced various hardships. We needed a change in scenery, so we packed up for a little fly fishing trip.

Now, for those who fly fish, you know the importance of the pause. It is the pause in the cast that allows the fly line to straighten and lengthen. When you cast, giving your fly line a slight tug as you raise the line out of the water gives the line enough resistance to pull out the slack and enough tension to extend and pull more line forward to cast further. The pause is when the line extends and straightens to its full potential. Without the pause, the line becomes a tangled unworkable mess.

I was rushing through the months without a pause and I was quickly becoming the tangled unworkable mess. The purpose of our little trip was not really to camp or to fish, those activities were an excuse for the trip. The purpose was to take a pause, to reconnect with family, and to find our center of peace. We spent the days standing in the middle of a large river watching the fish and the birds. We spent the evenings around a campfire as the sky darkened and then lightened with an infinite number of stars. We laughed as we told stories and running jokes. I even knitted and Little Clover caught his first fish on a fly rod. We paused and as a result, we straighten back out to our full potential.

We saw a very big walking stick bug right by our picnic table. Isn't it huge?